Imagine the scene: You’ve spent countless hours searching for the perfect fringed moccasins.
You are thrilled and click through to the product page. Now you can add to your bag.
Then disaster strikes: they are out of stock.
Online shoppers have become all too familiar with this scene in recent years.
According to Adobe Analytics, a perfect storm of supply disruptions and surge demand in some categories led to out-of-stock messages rising by astonishing 172 percent over pre-pandemic levels heading into 2021 holiday season. Stock shortages were most common in:
ApparelSporting goodsBaby itemsElectronics
You can’t expect customers to wait for an item to come back in stock if it isn’t available right away. McKinsey’s 2020 survey found that 29 percent of those who had shopped at new retailers or brands since the pandemic struck shopped because they were unable to find the product they needed.
It doesn’t have be this way.
You have one last chance to convince your customers to stay with you and not go straight to your competitors if you do your product pages correctly.
Let’s now look at nine strategies that can help you win sales even when stock is low.
How to increase conversions on out-of-stock product pages
1. Incentivize Shoppers to Purchase Something Else
2. Other Products?
3. Capture the Email Address of the Customer
4. Clearly explain the size availability
5. Move Out-of Stock Products to the Bottom Category Pages
6. Customers can create custom wishlists
7. Pre-Order Unavailable Products
8. A “Product Key” can be used on Category Pages
9. You can increase your shipping time
1. Incentivize Shoppers to Purchase Something Else
Let me start by introducing my favorite way to reduce stock problems: giving customers a compelling reason not to buy stock.
You can think about it this way: If you went into a brick-and mortar store to inquire about a product, and the assistant said it was out-of-stock, then ignored you, that’s a bad experience.
Why not offer the exact same experience to your e-commerce shop? It is lazy, it frustrates your customers, and it can cost you sales.
Karmaloop, a streetwear retailer, shows us an alternative way to approach the matter. If you attempt to buy an out-of stock product, you will be redirected to a boilerplate webpage encouraging you to search for alternatives.
The best part is that you get a 30% discount on your purchase.
This is a very aggressive savings, but it’s a smart strategy. It’s better to sell something at 30% than to lose it completely.
2. Other Products?
A variation on the strategy previously mentioned is to suggest alternative products to customers, instead of giving them an incentive to shop around.
This will ensure that you are certain that all the options you offer are currently available. It’s not what you want for customers to be able to search for another product that they like, only to discover that it’s no longer in stock.
This means that you don’t have to offer a discount. It keeps your margin intact. This is how it might look:
Source: WooCommerce
These “top-rated options” are in-stock, popular products that fall within the same product category as the unavailable one. This strategy is great for retaining customers, provided they aren’t 100% sold on the original product.
It has one minor drawback: it requires some technical knowledge to put into practice. However, there are many plug-ins for popular e-commerce platforms to help you do this job.
3. Capture the Email Address of the Customer
It is important to consider what additional value you can provide your customer to create an out-of-stock product page.
You may not be able to sell them the product that they desire right away, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
You can ask your customer for their email address if you are experiencing a temporary stock shortage. This will allow you to let them know when the stock is back with a back in-stock email.
Let’s take a look at how it might work in practice. The customer is first presented with a call-to-action (CTA), which informs them that the product is not in stock but that they can sign up for notifications.
Source: Back in Stock
They are then shown an email capture popup that confirms the details of their purchase.
Source: Back in Stock
This approach offers two benefits:
This allows you to retain the sale.
4. Clearly explain the size availability
What if your products aren’t universally applicable? You might also be able to sell the same item in different colorways from one product page.
It’s not possible to just create a page for “out-of stock” and cover all possibilities. Some sizes and colors may still be available. This is especially problematic in fashion ecommerce.
While ASOS is generally a great company when it comes to user experience, I think it has a few kinks.
Until you click on the dropdown menu, there is no indication that stock shortages exist for certain sizes. This is a frustrating situation for customers.
Take a look at Sophie & Trey’s approach to the same problem:
It is immediately apparent that this product has been discontinued in medium.
This doesn’t completely eliminate the problem, however. The product is still not in stock. Sophie & Trey makes the situation less frustrating by explaining the availability levels and not forcing users to click any additional buttons.
It is all about setting expectations early on in the buying process.
5. Bump Out-of Stock Products to the Bottom Category Pages
Unless your product range is very limited, there are chances that your category pages or internal search results span several pages.
Very few, if any, customers will cycle all the way through those pages. Take, for example, H&M’s men’s section.
To view the entire range, you would need to click “load more products” 53 times.
It’s okay to hide out-of-stock items at the bottom or end of your results. This will allow you to prioritize what’s actually in stock.
It’s not as simple as that. This approach is great for shoppers searching for products on your site. What if shoppers search Google for products and find a listing in the SERPs?
They will click on the link to see the product, but you won’t have it in stock. They’ll then bounce. This is why this strategy can only be used in conjunction with one or more of the out-of-stock product pages strategies in this article.
6. Customers can create custom wishlists
Amazon’s geniuses have created this smart strategy for out-of-stock product pages.
Amazon currently lists more than 350 million products. Some of these products will sometimes be out of stock.
Let’s suppose that you are desperate to purchase a new iPhone 6S. Funny enough, even e-commerce giants like Amazon and its many vendors are having trouble keeping stock levels for a 6.5-year old smartphone. So we have two options.
The second option is to present us with alternatives products. We’ve covered that one already. This second option lets us add the box-fresh iPhone 6S and other products to our “wishlist”.
This will make it easy to find the product in the future. If it is back in stock, you can share your wishlist with friends to have them buy it.
7. Offer Pre-Orders on Unavailable Products
You don’t have to cancel the transaction just because a product is not in stock. You don’t have to point customers in another direction just because a product is out of stock.
You can let them place a preorder. They will jump at the chance to get a product if they really want it.
Pre-orders, as you can probably guess are orders for products that aren’t in stock. Customers can request shipping immediately after the product becomes available.
This is an example of this strategy, courtesy H-Street, skateboard brand.
H-Street makes the option even more appealing by offering a 10% discount to anyone who pre-orders. This approach doesn’t make it difficult to close the deal now, even if stock isn’t available.
This tactic can also be applied to products that aren’t yet on the market. Sony used it to its advantage before the long-awaited PlayStation 5 console was released.
Remember that communication is key with out-of-stock products strategies. You must be clear with customers about when they can expect to receive the product if they are willing to pay cash.
Once the transaction is completed, follow up with an email confirmation. Regular updates about expected delivery times are also important to ensure that the customer does not feel neglected.
8. A “Product Key” can be used on Category Pages
A great way to handle out-of-stock product pages, is to discourage shoppers from clicking on them.
Good as Gold displays a “product key”, on each category page.
Items marked with an “X”, which indicate that they are out of stock, will be unavailable for customers to access.
Moreover, customers can view all other Good as Gold products in stock. This gives them ample reason to look elsewhere.
9. You can increase your shipping time
Full disclosure: This strategy can be misleading. I don’t like it.
If you are certain that the product will be available within a few days, you can add those additional days to your shipping time.
Customers can purchase immediately without having to learn about availability.
This strategy is very risky, especially in a period when supply chains are uncertain. You’ll have to explain why the product didn’t arrive in stock when you expected.
This results in a poor customer experience. It may win you one sale but it could also dissuade that customer from shopping again with you in the future. You could also get a lot of negative customer reviews.
Conclusion
You can see that out-of-stock products do not have to mean lost sales.
There are many ways to keep the customer happy and close the deal.
It doesn’t matter what tactic you use, it is important to be as transparent and open as possible.
Do not keep customers waiting. If you have their email address, send them regular updates to let them know that you aren’t forgetting.
You might also consider giving them a reward for their patience.
Sleeknote’s first article, How to Optimize Out of Stock Product Pages for Conversions, appeared first on Sleeknote.
———————————————————————————————————————————
By: Emil Kristensen
Title: How to Optimize Out-of-Stock Product Pages for Conversions
Sourced From: sleeknote.com/blog/out-of-stock-product-pages
Published Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2022 11:12:26 +0000
Did you miss our previous article…
https://onlinemarketingagencies.net/the-incredible-collision-of-marketing-and-civil-activism/
Leave a Reply